The Dirty Dozen: The Initial Cohort.
In which all your questions are answered.
Soooo…thank you so much for helping me establish my Substack, The Ten Thousand.
There are no privacy or confidentiality issues here, your email is safe and the subscription is and always will be free. There is no referral system, no advertising, no pyramid sales (hmm, there’s an idea). I just need a dozen friends to take my Substack as evidence that someone out there gives a shit.
This Substack is a business tool. It operates in tandem with my LinkedIn and website (launching this week) to generate more walk-up trade for my service.
Google or Large Language Models (Chat GPT, Claude and the like) are governed by algorithms always in search of authority and substance. The algos favour vendors with lots of material spread across a variety of platforms. While a big audience is great, the depth of knowledge, not the number of subscribers, likes and patrons, determine how many people find your business through search. That’s why I will be pouring material into this Substack over the next few months, books, videos, posts, both old and new.
Don’t feel compelled to read or listen, although you are, of course, absolutely welcome to do just that; all I need you to do is continue to exist.
Books are a bit of tough slog, especially in a difficult economy. Far more attractive, I hope, is a service in which I introduce people to their foundational story, which is, by no accident, also their foundational business story. If they want a book, great, but the book isn’t the service so much as the ultimate upsell.
My service involves looking for a sort of secular parable and, over 10,000 interviews (hence the name), I’ve never found someone who didn’t have one buried, often quite deep, in their backstory.
It might surprise you how little people know about their story which, social media and reviews aside, operates as the main tell for people considering hiring them for whatever thing it is they provide.
Business stories are all the rage, as they have been for a while (Start With Why, Building A Story Brand, Stories That Stick) but in the rush toward narrative people have forgotten that the purpose of story is not to entertain. A story is meant to furnish the listener with a conclusion, a few powerful words that can guide the listener to better results, maybe even a more fruitful life and business. Story is a conclusion delivery device.
Social media inundates us with story but offers precious few conclusions and conclusions, after all, is why we listen to stories in the first place. There is lots of research on this, much of it authentic and truthful.
So welcome. I hope the material that finds its way into your mailbox delivers the odd kernel of joy or wisdom and thanks for making this possible.
Mike